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Wednesday, March 15, 2017

Rant #1,862: Buchemia, the Magic Country

The snow has come and gone, and I guess we had what amounted to a free pass yesterday.

I shoveled the walk, dug out my car, and yes, when I was at my computer, I continued to look for a new job.

The job search is going absolutely nowhere, and yes, I am a bit down that it hasn't led to at least some possibilities.

But the talk of snow in the previous Rant has led me to think back several decades, to when I was a kid and I loved the snow, to times that I really relish and will never forget, times that I think about to bring me up when I am down.

I am thinking about all the fun times I had growing up in Rochdale Village, South Jamaica, Queens, a stomping ground to top all stomping grounds in my life.

My mind wandered lately, and I got to think of my last days there, and I thought, for the first time in many a day, about something called "Buchemia."

There was some talk about this on Facebook recently, but I thought today--with all the snow around--would be a nice time to introduce many of you to what Buchemia actually was, as I remember it--and I probably forgot a lot of stuff attached to it too.

If I remember correctly, Buchemia was a mythical kingdom that I thought up--perhaps with the help of others--related to Barry B., a classmate in eighth grade when I was going to I.S. 72, what would today be called a middle school but back then was the neighborhood's junior high school. I don't recall why I was influenced by him to create such a mythical kingdom, but I give him the credit for sparking my mind to create this thing.

In the mythical land of Buchemia resided a being called Flinky. I am sure that this was somehow influenced by Gumby, but again, I don't remember the whole thing about either Buchemia or Flinky.

We had certain classes, and certainly during lunchtime, when the whole lot of us were together, and I guess we were bored stiff, and we used to waste good lined writing paper drawing pictures of Buchemia and Flinky.

We had a Buchemian president, vice president, and all the other top governmental officials, which were, of course, us, all the participants in the creation of Buchemia. One day you could be the president, the next day the vice president, etc. It was a very fluid experience.

But we drew up pictures of Buchemia, including the map of the land of our creation, and heaven knows where those picture are today. If I could find them, that would be some hoot to look at 45-plus years since we created them.

And the national anthem of Buchemia was the old Sunmaid Raisins theme song: "Sunmaid Raisins, Sunmaid Raisins, for the fastest energy, in the west" is how I think it went, or something like it.

And that is pretty much all I remember about Buchemia.

I do remember that it was fun to do, and we used to pass around what we had done with it in the middle of class and during lunch break.

I guess it was a way for bored minds to keep everything moving inside of our heads during down time, but it was fun.

I think Buchemia died when we graduated I.S. 72 and went our separate ways, but one of my Facebook friends--a member of our group way back when--brought it up a few weeks ago on the social media site, and it was something I had not thought about for decades … and as I said, I cannot remember too much about it other than what I told you.

Kids have such fertile imaginations, and the group I hung out with certainly fit that description to a T. We were all pretty bright, and the things we thought up were pretty brilliant and interesting, too.

I just wish I could remember more about Buchemia, and perhaps one day, I will hunt around for anything I can find about this mythical country that we created.

Boy, it would be so much fun to find even one piece of paper where we devoted some time to Buchemia.

Youth may be wasted on the young, but no, I don't consider my youth a waste, not in any way, shape or form.